David Shultz

Image from EVGo

Shares of EVgo are up over 20% today after the company released Q4 earnings that outpaced predictions from Wall Street. Analysts had predicted the company would announce a loss per share in the neighborhood of $0.16-$0.18, but the Los Angeles-based electric vehicle charging company reported a much more meager loss, to the tune of just $0.06 per share.

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Battery Streak

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Battery Streak is one of the more interesting startups in the Southern California clean tech space. The company, like so many others, is trying to decrease the length of time it takes to charge a battery. Its technology, however, is somewhat unique.

Based on research born out of UCLA, the company is leveraging an exotic element known as niobium that can replace or supplement graphite in a lithium-ion battery anode. If you really want to nerd out, I explained more of the details of the chemistry when I covered the company last summer. But so far Battery Streak’s testing shows that their niobium-laden cells have much faster charging speeds, longer life, and cooler temperatures than traditional lithium-ion batteries.

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Photo by Saif71.com on Unsplash

This is the web version of dot.LA’s daily newsletter. Sign up to get the latest news on Southern California’s tech, startup and venture capital scene.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about how if the United States wants to electrify its passenger vehicle fleet by 2050, the country will need to mine three times more lithium each year than is currently being mined globally. And that’s just for passenger vehicles. There’s long haul trucking to consider. Planes, trains, grid scale battery storage projects, bikes, scooters, and a million other applications also require the alkali metal.

With all that demand ramping up, you’d expect the price of lithium to be at an all time high. But then, you’d be wrong. In the last five months, the price of lithium carbonate has fallen 52%, from to $4,533 per ton in late November to to just $2,219 per ton today.

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